Labor

During the Industrial Revolution

Types of Labor

• Displaced farmers (from the enclosure) looking for work

• Women now had to work in factories to help support the family

• Children (as young as 3 years old)

Industrial Revolution required cheap labor to produce mass production at a profit. Only the poor worked in factories

Result of all This work

• Creation of a working class = Proletariat

• The unemployed and underemployed come to the

cities for factory jobs and become a new social class

– the proletariat – the industrial working class.

• Miners

• Mill Workers

• Machine Operators

• They were the heart of the working force behind the

Industrial Revolution

Child Labor

• Children as young as 3 years old worked in factories

• They faced the same dangerous conditions that adults did in the work place.

• Many stood for long hours without a break.

• They suffered from height disorders, toxin inhalation, lost limbs, or worse….death

Result of all this work

• Growing Middle Class = Bourgeois

• New jobs came about during the Industrial Revolution that required more skill

• Merchants

• Factory Owners

• Shippers

• Land Owners

• Middle Class Women now stayed at home vs. working. They became the new consumer (they were the one’s purchasing all the mass produced goods)

Result of all this work

Time Clock

The clock becomes important:

• Factory work required you to be on TIME; if you were not on time you were physically punished.

• People now lived their lives based on clock time and not by the rising or setting of the sun

• *Think of 5 places that demand you be on time

Working Conditions

• 14 hour work days, 6 days a week (everyone had Sundays off)

• If you had a break it was very short (most people ate as they worked)

• Workers had to keep up with the machines

• Dangers in the workplace:• Factories seldom well-lit or clean

• No Safety Regulations – Machines injured workers

• No government program to provide aid in case of injury or unemployment

• Coal mines

What happened next

• Demand for reform

• Riots and Mobs broke out over living and working

conditions

• Child labor became unbearable for society

Let’s take a closer look

Video clip to be viewed after reading

primary sources